Help for the rookie

I am relatively new to FCP. My husband got me 7.0 for Christmas. What's the best online class? I've been playing around here and there with it...I'll put a clip (usually .mp4) on the timeline and it requires a render before watching/previewing it. There's got to be a way to bypass that. Maybe my format or set-up is wrong. Any advice?

Thanks
K

Wow, you got FCP 7 as a gift in 2015? I'd have put you directly on Final Cut Pro X, something that runs on modern Macs and is supported, and is way easier to learn and use.

Here's the official Apple training text, which is really good. It is self paced, hands on, very well done.
www.amazon.com/Apple-Pro-Training-Final-...ries+final+cut+pro+7

Online, well, whoever has online training for FCP 7 left. Maybe here. Mr. Whol was part of the original FCP dev team and is a really good trainer.
www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/finalcut7101

As for rendering, you'll get a lot of that needed in FCP 7. Highly compressed codecs like MP4 will require a lot of rendering. There's no magic button to turn it off. I don't remember if there is an MPEG-4 setting for Sequences in FCP 7. If there is, then the Sequence should be set to the codec, frame rate, frame size that you're using. The book and course above walk you through all of that. This is pretty much a non-issue with FCPX.

But, I have to say, you'd be much better off going with Final Cut Pro X from the start. 7 is so outdated and unsupported, I'd not recommend even bothering with it. Just my two cents.

BenB wrote: … 7 is so outdated and unsupported, I'd not recommend even bothering with it. ….

or, risking to be - finally - called crazy, switch to Adobe Premiere (elements, if you don't like renting software). This is an up2date track-based NLE with -zillions of tutorials, online courses, boards, wotever.......

Meant as an academic suggestion ...


… where do you get FC/p7 anyhow??? :dry:

Sorry for asking, but where did he find a legit brand new, never opened version of Final Cut Studio 2? It has been off the market for a very long time.

I would suggest upgrading to Final Cut Pro X, the headaches of FCP7, also known in the trade as classic FCP, the inability of 7 to handle modern codecs, even on a top of the range Mac Pro, with 32GB RAM, there is simply no question, forget FCP7, it never existed, lets pretend it did not, it was maybe suitable, Apple never updated as it should, left it laggy, error prone.

The Extreme engine profiler is a joke, it is a 32bit application, trying to run on a 64bit operating system, it is just never going to be a pleasant experience, you will only get frustrated, annoyed, many other negative connotations!

Many here, that once knew 7, then updated to X, we have forgotten what we knew about 7, there is simply nothing positive to say about classic, aka Final Cut Pro 7.

The features of X, simply for a couple hundred US $, is so worth the investment, buy the official Brendan Boykin Final Cut Pro X for 10.2, go through the book, watch Ripple Training on Youtube, I used both to pass the exam.

I would suggest leaving 7 in the past, where the past belongs!!